Friday, March 16, 2012

Hoardica is in the Netherlands this week, possibly field sketching with Marjolein Bastin. You can read this week's post about Hoardica here.

I did not have the time to create a postcard to document the event,

but instead wanted to share the back story of how I happen to know one of Holland's national treasures.

Back in my Hallmark days (another life time!),
I not only had the privelage of meeting her and having books personally signed by her, but rarer still, I was one of a handful of artists who spent three days up in Kearney, Mo (at a studio outpost),
walking, talking, sketching and seeing nature through Marjolein's eyes.
Later, back in Holland, Marjolein personally inscribed a copy of her published sketchbook (all in Dutch) to each artist who attended the workshop.
WoW!
Don't know if the book was ever available in the U.S.

﻿Each page is dated and shows 2-3 pages were filled each week as part of her 16 hour day "at work". She not only sketched, but taped in flowers, feathers and insect wings so she had actual samples to draw from later. Her finished illustrations are highly detailed.
She also writes observations, which become design elements on each page.

While at the 3 day workshop, all of us artists were expected to keep our own sketch journals.
Wasn't difficult with such a great mentor and inspiration in our midst!

It's been 20 years (almost to the day) and my dried plants haven't crumbled away.
The Scotch tape is still sticking tight and hasn't yellowed.

I look at my pages and am reminded of the sunny days, walking through the woods and prairie, with a petite, wren-like woman who allowed a large spider to crawl on her hands (the better to observe him close up!) and stopped us all to watch the ballet of a meadow lark bending a stalk of prairie grass as he alighted to rest a minute (it became one of her more famous and most copied subjects).

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

The one thing I really missed, while out on the wide open road with my hubs,

was my calming tea ritual.

So Monday morning, after the kids were off to school, I wasted no time brewing a pot of tea and cutting into a fruitcake (yes, I do like it! And one of the few Americans that does. No apologies!)

My mom is currently visiting with my youngest sister up in Michigan (Shelby Township) and not only have they been hitting the thrift stores regularly, but also deep cleaning stored boxes and my sister (the obsessive baker)'s pantry.

So it's no surprise that the two boxes UPS dropped on my front porch last week contained edibles, wearables and dust collectors.

Two panettone, 2 home made fruitcakes (when will I start my diet?!), a tin of cookies, foil pans in novelty shapes (sister's destash), china trinkets, old dish cloths, my mother's spectacle collection (note enclosed asked, "etsy worthy?"), a jar of buttons, baggies of buttons, and a gorgeous suitcase, which will end up in my etsy shop soon.

My mother had two china cabinets full of treasures and the surplus spilled over onto tables and hid in cabinets around our house when I was growing up.

Since then, she sold her house and now divides her time between my sister in New Jersey and sister in Michigan.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Last week my sister-in-law very generously offered to take our three kids for a week so I could go out on the road with my truckin' husband. He's only home on weekends and we never have enough time together. Alone.

It's a busman's holiday for him, but a real holiday from kids and domestic drudgery for me!

The accomodations are not 5 star, but cozy, clean and I don't have to make the bed.

There is also a microwave and coffee pot.

The scenery varies from grain elevators (this is Cargill in Kansa city, MO) where we get loaded with bean meal (ground up grain destined for chicken feed)...

...To breath-taking wonders like this limestone blasted away to make way for a road in southern Missouri.

Nathalie B. Thompson

"If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing." --Benjamin Franklin

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